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+ - Hollywood Studios Issue DMCA To Censor Pirate Bay Documentary

Submitted by Aaron B Lingwood
Aaron B Lingwood writes "As reported by TorrentFreak, Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate have all asked Google to take down links pointing to the Pirate Bay documentary 'TPB-AFK'. The film, created by Simon Klose, is available for no cost and has already been watched by millions of people. The public response to this free release model has been overwhelmingly positive, but it’s now meeting resistance from Hollywood, TPB’s arch rival.

Pirate Party Australia opines 'Hollywood is using takedown notices to censor Pirate Bay doco, is it incompetence or malice? Always hard to tell'. Whichever the answer, the system is definately broken."

+ - NYT: Apple's Web of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions 2

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Even as Apple became the nation's most profitable tech company, it avoided billions in taxes in the U.S. and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen, according to Congressional investigators. The investigation is expected to set up a potentially explosive confrontation between lawmakers and Apple CEO Tim Cook at a public hearing on Tuesday. "Apple successfully sought the holy grail of tax avoidance," said Senator Carl Levin. "It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars while claiming to be tax resident nowhere." In response to the release of the Congressional report, Apple published its prepared testimony a day early. One can only hope to see a Steve Jobs-like presentation by Cook on Tuesday!"

+ - Latvian Police Raids Teacher's Home for Copyright Infringement

Submitted by richlv
richlv writes "Latvian police recently raided the home of a history teacher and confiscated his computer. The crime? Scanning a history book and making it available on his website covering various topics on history. The raid was based on a complaint from the publisher, which has a near-monopoly on educational materials in Latvia, often linked with shady connections in the Ministry of Education.
An article in Latvian: http://www.tvnet.lv/zinas/kriminalzinas/464514-par_gramatas_publiskosanu_skolotajam_draud_cietumsods"

+ - MI5 abandons multi-million pound IT project ->

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes "There seems to be a special curse that effects the building of digital records and case management software for security services, something to which the US FBI could readily attest. Now the curse has fallen on the British security service MI5 for a sum of at least £90m : "A 2011 Security Committee report said: “"The Security Service’s new electronic information management system is intended to “modernise and enhance the Service’s information management capability” and “provide a greater level of information assurance and mitigate the risks of intelligence failure and information loss”. “The Director General told the Committee in evidence that the project “is in some difficulties”. . . . But it is understood that earlier this year that the MI5 had decided to admit failure and re-start with a new generation of IT specialists."

 "
Link to Original Source

+ - Forbes Takes a Second Look At Rossi's E-Cat Cold Fusion Device->

Submitted by Baldrson
Baldrson writes "Forbes technology contributor Mark Gibbs reports that: "I haven’t posted about Rossi and his E-Cat since last August simply because there wasn’t much to report other than more of Rossi’s unsupported and infuriating claims ... What everyone wanted was something that Rossi has been promising was about to happen for months: An independent test by third parties who were credible... much to my, and I suspect many other people’s surprise, a report by credible, independent third parties is exactly what we got. Published on May 16, the paper titled “Indication of anomalous heat energy production in a reactor device” would appear to deliver what we wanted...And now, the big reveal the authors’ conclusions are (again, the emphasis is mine): ' if we consider the whole volume of the reactor core and the most conservative figures on energy production, we still get a value of (7.93 ± 0.8) 102 MJ/Liter that is one order of magnitude higher than any conventional source.'""
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+ - Future Promises More Drones, More Drone Hacks->

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes "The “consumerization” of UAV technology has created a lot of opportunities for Cool! — like this video of a UAV flying over (and almost in to) Niagra Falls (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMHr6LQhTRE). But it has also led to some problems. In March, a UAV “quadrcopter” came within a couple hundred feet of striking an Alitalia flight trying to land at JFK Airport in New York. More concerning: the FAA is set to license tens of thousands of drones for use over the U.S., many by law enforcement or private security firms. (https://www.eff.org/document/timeline-domestic-drone-integration).That has prompted warnings about a huge breach of privacy for U.S. citizens.
But a security researcher warns that snooping is only part of the problem. Speaking at The Security B-Sides event in Boston, Andrew Clare, a doctoral candidate at MIT’s Humans and Automation Lab (HAL), told an audience of security experts that the same economic pressures that drive UAV adoption will hinder the security of UAVs, leaving many susceptible to hacking and manipulation, as well as data loss."
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+ - The return of cassette tape ..->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The humble cassette tape, a happy memory for many music fans of a certain age, has staged a comeback for one Canadian company ..

"Digital will always be ones and zeros .. Analogue is still the best sound from a recording.""
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+ - Plug-and-play artificial compound eye for robotic applications->

Submitted by Sabine Hauert
Sabine Hauert writes "Inspired by the fly’s vision system, the Curved Artificial Compound Eye (CurvACE) published today in the prestigious journal PNAS can enable a large range of applications that require motion detection using a small plug-and-play device. As shown in this video, you could use these sensors to control small robots navigating an environment, even in the dark, or equip a small autonomous flying robot with limited payload. Other applications include home automation, surveillance, medical instruments, prosthetic devices, and smart clothing."
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+ - NSA Data Center the Focus of Tax Controversy->

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes "Location is everything when choosing the site of a data center. Firms such as Microsoft and Google and Facebook spend a lot of time looking into the costs of land, power, regulation and taxes before placing their respective data centers in a particular place. Sometimes, that local tax bill comes into play in a big way. Just ask the National Security Agency (NSA), which learned it faces a multimillion-dollar annual state tax on the power consumed by its new data center in Camp Williams, south of Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Tribune obtained a series of email exchanges between the feds and the state, with the NSA protesting a $2.4 million tax on its annual power expenditure, pegged at about $40 million. Harvey Davis, director of installations and logistics for the NSA, sent a letter (subsequently quoted by the newspaper) to state officials that made the logistics argument: “Long-term stability in the utility rates was a major factor in Utah being selected as our site for our $1.5bn construction at Camp Williams. HP325 [the new law] runs counter to what we expected.”"
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+ - Viruses in mucus protect from infection->

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes "Researchers have discovered that animal mucus â" whether from humans, fish or corals â" is loaded with bacteria-killing viruses called phages. These protect their hosts from infection by destroying incoming bacteria. In return, the phages are exposed to a steady torrent of microbes in which to reproduce. Mucus mainly consists of huge molecular complexes called mucins, which are made up of thousands of glycan sugars attached to a central protein backbone. The team showed that phages stick to these sugars, reducing the number of bacteria that can attach to mucus by more than 10,000 times."
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+ - Chilean Start-up Prints First Mind-Designed Object 1

Submitted by seanellis
seanellis writes "Chilean start-up Thinker Thing has delivered on its promise, and has announced the first real object designed by pure thought. Using an evolutionary algorithm guided by emotional feedback, Thinker Thing's goal is to allow the creation of designs without having to first learn a craft to make them. Their current project is to allow schoolchildren to design toy monsters, which are ideal experimental objects as they are very flexible and emotionally charged."

+ - Reporters threatened with CFAA suit, labeled hackers for finding security hole-> 1

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "Scripps News reporters discovered 170,000 records online of customers of Lifeline, a government program offering affordable phone service for low-income citizens, that contained everything needed for identity theft . Last year, the FCC "tightened" the rules for the program by requiring Lifeline phone carriers to document applicants' eligibility, which led to collecting more sensitive information from citizens. A Scripps News investigative team claims it "Googled" the phone companies TerraCom Inc. and YourTel America Inc. to discover all of the files.

A Scripps reporter asked (pdf) for an on-camera interview with the COO of TerraCom and YourTel after explaining the files were freely available online. That did not happen, but shortly thereafter the customer records disappeared from the internet. Then, the blame-the-messenger hacker accusations and mudslinging began. Although the Scripps reporters videotaped the process showing how they found the documents, attorney Jonathon Lee for both telecoms threatened the "Scripps Hackers" with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)."
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+ - HOT Raspberry Pi: A DIY Mini Desktop PC Build Project->

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes "Hot Hardware recently set out to design a mini desktop computer with the popular Raspberry Pi single board computer. The Raspberry Pi is a Linux-driven, ARM processor-based micro computer that is known for its low cost and small size. People use the device for a variety of projects, from micro-servers to low cost media players. Basically, the goal was to turn what is currently one of the cheapest bare-bones computer boards into a fully enclosed mini desktop computer that could be taken anywhere without the need for cabling or setup. This small DIY project is just one of many examples of the flexibility of Raspberry Pi's open architecture. And to think you can even run Quake and Minecraft on a self-contained little device like this."
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+ - Amazon River exhales carbon taken up by rain forest->

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes "The Amazon rain forest, the "lungs of the planet," inhales carbon dioxide as it exudes oxygen. Until recently it was believed much of the rain forest’s carbon floated down the Amazon River and ended up deep in the ocean, since tough material like bark and stems were thought to be indigestible by river bacteria. A new University of Washington study shows that, in fact, woody plant matter is almost completely digested by bacteria in the Amazon River, and that plays a major part in fueling the river’s breath. The finding has implications for global carbon models, and for the ecology of the Amazon and others among the world’s rivers."
Link to Original Source

+ - 450 Million Lines Of Scanned Software Code Can't Be Wrong->

Submitted by CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes "The 2012 Coverity Scan Open Source Report details the analysis of more than 450 million lines of software code. Key findings this year suggest that code quality for open source software continues to mirror that of proprietary software. Defect density (defects per 1,000 lines of software code) is a commonly used measurement for software quality. Coverity's analysis found an average defect density of .69 for open source software projects that leverage the firm's own scan service. It also found an average defect density of .68 for proprietary code developed by the firm's own enterprise customers. Both have better quality as compared to the accepted industry standard defect density for good quality software of 1.0."
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The public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble. -- Thomas Carlyle

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